Security-issue lifecycle

June 29, 2026 · View on GitHub

title: Security-issue lifecycle (end-to-end) status: stable kind: feature mode: Triage source: > MISSION.md § Rationale ("Security-issue handling is a load-bearing use case"). README.md § Skill families (security). The security skill family + tools/cve-tool-vulnogram + tools/gmail + tools/ponymail + tools/privacy-llm. acceptance:

  • The flow runs import → triage → dedupe → CVE allocate → fix → sync → invalidate, each step a confirm-before-apply skill.
  • Tracker contents stay private; only stable identifiers (URLs, #NNN) are public-safe. Public PRs are scrubbed pre-disclosure.
  • Every applied state change is audit-logged.

Security-issue lifecycle

What it does

The framework's flagship, highest-procedure flow: handle an inbound ASF security report end-to-end, from security@ import through CVE publication, with a human gate and an audit-log entry at every step.

Where it lives

  • Skills: security-issue-import (+ -from-pr, -from-md, -from-scan, -via-forwarder), security-issue-triage, security-issue-deduplicate, security-cve-allocate, security-issue-fix, security-issue-sync, security-issue-invalidate. security-issue-import-from-scan is the scanner on-ramp: it ingests multi-finding scan output through a pluggable scan-format adapter (tools/scan-format/), buckets each finding for operator review, and creates trackers only after per-finding confirmation. security-issue-import-via-forwarder is the relay sub-skill: handles reports relayed by an upstream broker (ASF security team or a third-party disclosure platform) by applying preamble-detect, credit-extract, and routing rules declared in tools/forwarder-relay/; never mutates tracker state on its own.
  • Tools: tools/cve-tool-vulnogram/generate-cve-json (CVE 5.x JSON), tools/cve-org, tools/gmail + tools/ponymail (mail), and the tools/privacy-llm gate/redactor (the privacy gate).

Behaviour & contract

  • Confirm-before-apply at every step. Imports create trackers only after confirmation; triage posts proposal comments and never decides; allocation is PMC-gated; fixes draft PRs the human opens.
  • Confidentiality (three layers, see AGENTS.md): tracker URLs and #NNN are public-safe identifiers; tracker contents are private; the security framing of a public PR is embargoed until the advisory ships.
  • Reporter PII redacted in-context; reporter credit preserved in the CVE credits[] only after the reporter confirms on the thread.
  • Audit log of every applied change (redacted identifiers only).

Out of scope

  • Agentic Drafting beyond the security case (see Drafting).
  • Sending mail — replies are drafted to the maintainer's outbox.

Acceptance criteria

  1. Each lifecycle skill is confirm-before-apply and audit-logs applied changes.
  2. No public surface produced by the flow contains tracker contents or pre-disclosure security framing.
  3. CVE JSON is regenerated to stay in lock-step with the tracker body.

Validation

uv run --project tools/skill-and-tool-validator --group dev skill-and-tool-validate
uv run --project tools/cve-tool-vulnogram/generate-cve-json --group dev pytest

Known gaps

  • The flow is stable; gaps surface as drift between a skill's documented steps and the adapters it calls — the loop's plan pass catches those.